


What The Blast Takes

by misery_chastain



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Multi, sapphic af, slightly erotic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 02:50:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misery_chastain/pseuds/misery_chastain
Summary: It was foolish to be frightened, at least at first. After all her life, Isabel Maru knows that.





	1. What the Blast Takes

The fine hair of her face - the kind that flower petals and ripe peaches and humans have - that’s what the blast takes first. After the hair is singed, there boils the skin, each layer, peeled back like a secret, the tissue and muscle underneath revealed, humanity’s truth, how everything is made to be ripped apart.  
_Even you._ __  
Her life flashes before her like the moving pictures they have in the city, what she’s never seen before, but here she sees first -   
The garden behind her family’s home. The sunflowers tall, faces to the sun, her little one, too, and maybe a butterfly went by -   
Her mother, face doughy and round, eyes chocolate, all together sweet, like a pastry. It is amazing, how the mind could make it all together again, like it was just before -   
The steps of her shoes, worn leather and shined, even as they come apart around the wide bow of her feet, vulnerable to pebbles, the dirt, dust - following her mother’s casket, eyes shut, gone bad, closed for good, but still she couldn’t look.  
She remembers all of that.  
  
But it was foolish to be frightened.  
She crawls, spattering blood, from the shed to the shower. Goggles, hood, coat, trousers, gloves - it is important to rid of any articles contaminated - to rinse - it’s on the floor of the shower that her hearing returns, sensing a rattled, gutted, sound that rips from her mouth, from the wound that stretches there, the smell sharp, somehow menstrual-sweet. Her sense returns to her and so does the rest of her senses - she feels the water rain against her premolars, her gum and tongue  exposed and the water pour out from her open lips.  
It was nothing she couldn’t contain, stitch up herself, treat with the milder concoctions she created a long time ago. And she knows how to protect herself, after all.  
But she was frightened, for that white hot flash, the moment where decades of life ambushed her, and if she was really going to die then why did she not see God, in that dazzling second, to greet her or, more likely, point her way down past his feet.  
If it was foolish to be frightened and more foolish to not only expect God to grant her with his presence, but to expect his existence at all.  
After all her life, Isabel Maru knows that.


	2. When She is Finally Left Alone

    Her mask does not stop the townspeople, pale and grief-stricken, from asking her when the doctor is to arrive.  
    She is the doctor, she tells them, and that’s when they seem to notice her bag of medicines, her gloves for the first time. They don’t hide their stares at the mask that covers her nose, the lower half of her face.  
    (Funny how they are looking for a man with womanly qualities, a doctor to heal, ease, sooth.) Doctor Maru barely speaks, and when she does it is only to inform, in her rasping voice, of the odds.  
    She wishes the families wouldn’t hover, wouldn’t demand miracles or her credentials, she’d like to be left alone with her work.   
    She’d like to be left alone with _them._  
    Sometimes the patients are so ill that they do not notice her, fingering their pulse, spreading their eyelids open, slipping a thermometer past their lips.  
Even with the heat of fever, breath dry and stale, skin ashen - she’s buckled by the sensation of being close to anyone. No two people are alone and soft and quiet like this, not unless they are lovers, she figures, and she has had none and now maybe won’t ever.  
  
    When she is finally left alone, it’s with a patient who is ill, _surely going to die_. The woman cannot open her eyes or lift her head or protest as the doctor steps across the threshold, inspects. The husband, racked with sobs and masculine shame, flees the room, and Doctor Maru holds back a tisk. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, surely not like this, where there is no pain, just weakness.  
    The woman cannot open her eyes or lift her head or protest or even turn away - not when Doctor Maru stoops over the death bed, face hovering above.   
    Death means the end of all fears, all exhaustion, and all secrets.   
    Finally alone, she presses the stiff cloth of her mask to the woman’s white lips, pushing hard to feel them against her own ravaged lips beneath.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fleshing out a Doctor Maru origin story. Such an interesting character! Any reviews, comments and critiques would be greatly appreciated. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Had to get something out about the character that hit me like a freight train. I haven't written fanfiction in a number of years. Any kudos, comments or critique would be greatly appreciated.


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